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I am now close to finished packing. There are boxes, bags, and furniture all looking at me with that, “so, we’re going in the truck soon, aren’t we?” expression. They’ve been through this drill before. They know what’s coming.

So Friday is D-Day. I pick up the truck and load all this crap in and then, come Saturday, drive across town and unload it. The good news here is that I’m not a pack rat and I don’t buy lots of furniture…so it’s going to be a pretty easy move. From a 1 br apartment to a 3 br house is totally the way to go. Of course, the place will look empty for a bit but the stuff I buy to fill it up?

Delivery, baby.

So, I’m getting ready to say good bye to this odd little cave that I’ve called home for a year. The one that I moved in to a year ago…because I was bailing out of my place with exFiance. And what did I to to celebrate my move?

I took Arjewtino to Opening Day.

What am I doing this year to celebrate my move?

I’m taking Arjewtino to opening day.

Huh. I’m starting to sense a trend here.

What a year. From then to now seems like a life time…and even still I haven’t gone back and actually read the entire thing again to, you kow, relive it. I don’t know that I need to do that, really. I mean, I’ve got the t-shirt and the DVD.

At any rate, I pack the truck Friday, move it Saturday, then go to Opening Day Sunday…and of course, then the cable comes sometime between Monday and June, and he’s hooking me up with HD and the baseball package.

That’s right, the baseball package. Every team, every game, in glorious HD.

I’ve said it before. Twice, in fact. Sometimes things just…well they just kinda click in this lock step sort of Universe-winkin’-at-ya way. Like it’s saying, “Good move, kid”.

There was a bit of teeth gnashing over the past few weeks between NGF and I. Some territorial growlings and “don’t put your fucking shit there OR ELSE” barking. More than there should be, and it was a frustrating set of corners to find ourselves against, paintbrushes in hands.

Then there was a scare…NGF in the same hospital that I’d been in, just a year before. It was damn near an anniversary, and when I went to visit her, with the echo of our yelling still fresh in my head, I found myself scared, confused, and ultimately, shocked at just how reactionary I’d been. How much I’d decided to blame her for things that weren’t really her fault, or at least weren’t malicious, and how I’d known she was doing it to me, too…and how somehow, I’d blown right past all of that and found my car parked on “Fuck You Boulevard” …

And yet there I was, waking up behind the wheel and saying “what the fuck was I thinking”.

Maybe I needed to see her frailty. Maybe I just needed something to force me to get over myself for a minute. Either way, NGF admitted to the hospital because she was too sick to come home and having to stay there for 3 nights, 2 days?

That did it.

Since then, we’ve been talking. More important than that, kids…far more important than that; we’ve been listening.

Bad timelines. Unfair and unexplained expectations. Fear of abandonment. Standing RIGHT next to the door with your fingers squeezing the handle so tight that your knuckles start to cramp. Holding back and visibly hiding scars. Biting tongues and diverting attention. Deflecting.

These things kill. From the inside out.

But you can, with one deep breath and one open declaration shine a light that sends it scurrying. But man, you gotta be brave, and you’ve gotta want it. You’ve got to let go of all the unfair and dispatch the unspoken.

You also have to say, openly and with every intention of following through, I’d rather not do this than do it wrong. But you don’t say it like an ultimatum. The difference between the ultimatum, which has the implied next line of “So let’s call it a day and head to different corners”, and this is that here the next line is;

So let’s do it right.

Since then, there’s a page that has been turned. We’ve actually started to fire like cylinders in the same motor. Since then we’ve been a whole lot more real, and consequently, we’ve been a whole lot more in touch…and trusting.

And I dig living this way.

So enjoy my newest musical obsession. Which I found on an XM Radio randomly playing that I’d been ignoring all day, until I started thinking that she’s not NGF anymore.

OK, so I lied. I told you that I’d write more and ummm…yeah yeah, I’m a bad blogger. So bad in fact that I was recently threatened with a petition if I don’t post something…anything…

I don’t know if it’s that I have less to say, as well, have you met me? My mouth is rarely without comment. The time crunch? Well, that’s a huge part of it. It’s also that I started this blog for a specific reason, then it shifted, and now it’s all kind of sort of…well…dissipated. At any rate, I haven’t been putting (digital) pen to (digital) paper much of late for a number of reasons. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t had things to say. Lord knows I’ve got things to say, and today we’re going to get back on track.

So sit back and enjoy. After all, you never know when I’ll get around to posting again.

Now then;

There’s this odd phenomena that I’ve noticed in the dating world. I’ve seen it in myself and in women that I’ve dated, but until recently I’ve never really had that “A-HA!!!” moment. Now however, I see…oh do I see….

What is it?

Post Traumatic Relationship Personality Transformation.

PTRPT, kids. It’s no joke, and you or someone you love might well be suffering from it. What is PTRPT? Allow me to explain.

First, you have to start with the assumption (or in most cases, fact) that dating is a game of patterns. That we more often than not wind up dating people that are familiar for a variety of reason and find ourselves repeating the same sorts of situations over and over again. Where PTRPT fits in to this, however, is with one very subtle shift in that logic.

It’s not always the same type of person that we wind up dating, but it IS the same type of situation. That’s where PTRPT comes in.

Let’s say that “Bill” has always dated the clingy, needy type. He does this for a number of reasons. Maybe Bill craves the responsibility of taking care of someone. Maybe he likes weak women. Maybe a million things. Not so long ago, our boy Bill was dating “Karen”, and Karen was a classic case of what he knows and, as per usual it didn’t work out. But something about the chronicles of Karen was different. Maybe it was her, maybe it was timing. But for whatever reason, something about his failed relationship caused a seismic shift deep down in the tectonic plates of Bill’s world…

And now, X amount of time later, Bill is dating “Sue”, and in the middle of a fight he hears something that he can’t get his mind around. Something that can’t be true because it’s just so friggin’ absurd.

What happened is that you’ve just been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Relationship Personality Transformation.

I have seen this first hand, folks. Chances are, so have you. For whatever reason, a huge chunk of some aspect of your ex (or maybe an ex froma few rounds ago) has infected your Chi like a case of VD. It didn’t have any symptoms that you were actually aware of…it’s not something you chose…but there it is. You’ve swapped roles with someone that you couldn’t stay with and become that person…andyou didn’t even realize it…

And why exactly didn’t you relaize it? Because it all felt so damned familiar. The tension, the dynamics, the expressions? All the same. Only the roles have changed completely. Now you’re the needy one…or the angry one…or the cheating one…or whatever it was that you bailed on.

OR

Whatever it was that bailed on you. It’s not all a one way street here. Have someone leave you because you’re clingy/angry/whatever, and you might find yourself in a relationship with someone that fills your part exactly. In essence, you find yourself dating…yourself. How’s that for irony? Suddenly you find yourself saying the same lines that not so very long ago were directed at you.

Again, it’s all so familiar that you won’t catch this until it’s too late. In fact, if it’s PTRPT that you’ve got, by definition, you’re not going to realize it until after the fact.

Me? I’ve been on both sides of this. I’ve caught myself realizing that “Holy Mary Mother of God, I’ve become HER”. Conversely, I’ve also sat there with my S.O. and listened to her talk about all the reasons she couldn’t stand her ex and thought “Hang on there..that’s YOU”.

So what exactly does that mean?

Well, the easy answer is that you’re a fucking mess.

I kid you.

Really, the honest answer is that you’re probably (1) not completely over your last relationship and, more importantly (2) in serious need of some self examination. Whatever has you repeating these patterns of dating the same person over and over again has now kicked it up a level and smacked you with PTRPT. It means you’re not getting something, and Someone somewhere is trying to tell you what that is.

Now, more importantly, how do you treat this phenomena?

Ahhh well, therein lies the rub, kids. Therein lies the God damned rub. See, it’s really so very simple that it’s almost absurd. It goes like this; what do you say to an alcoholic who wants to get well?

Stop drinking.

Sounds ridiculous, right? It ain’t. More often than not every other answer is some sort of BS way to prolong the issue and not really do anything. You have to STOP DRINKING.

Well, in this case, you have to STOP DATING. I know, I know, that’s not what you want to hear, but that’s the answer. What you want to hear is that there’s a pill or a class or something that will allow you to keep dating while working and blah blah blah.

That’s all BS to keep you tied to the drama that you love so much you’re getting creative with ways to experience it. Get out of the cycle, step away from the drama, and just be. Figure out who and what you are and what you want. Be a good Buddhist and just BE. In that stillness, of course, you’ll probably freak out a bit. You know what that is, right? That’s withdrawl and you need to fight through that shit. In the stillness that follows, you’ll start to see why exactly it is that you need the drama so much in the first place. You’ll start to see what you miss more clearly, and if you really dig a little in that space, you’ll see why.

And you’ll see why it sucks and why it’s so damned detrimental to you in the first place.

OR, you can just go date another clingy fucker while you shell out $150/hour for a half way decent shrink who will listen to you whine. Just remember that when you find yourself in that position that our boy Bill was in, saying “What the hell just happened”?